My new Stomping GROUND
Learn everything about Rioja from a friendly Spanish winemaker and if you time it right you can even get to tread the grapes
WE are 20 metres underground, in a labrynth of damp, crumbly-walled 16th century caves, ladling blood-red wine into glasses from a concrete bath so huge we need a wooden ladder to clamber up and peer down the hatch into it.
We have visions of throwing off our shoes and stomping about in barn-sized basins of grapes, dancing the juicy bunches into a heavenly mess.
Now, this might sound like a wine lover’s dream and admittedly, I’m on the tipsy side, but this is real – as real as you get. Welcome to Rioja. (Sadly, we’re going to miss the harvest grape stomping party this month.)
We’re deep down in the caves of Bodega Lecea, a small family winery, in the hilly village of San Ascensio, in the Ebro and Najerilla Valleys in La Rioja, the famous wine region in Northern Spain.
Estella, who is in her early 20s, blows the dust off bottles of traditional Rioja, that were bottled by her late grandad Rolfino when he was just a boy, making wine, just like his own grandparents did before him, on this very plot.
This ‘vintage’ wine is not for sale, or for sampling although the family often nip down to grab an old bottle for weddings and birthdays.
There’s a filthy pleasure in glugging your favourite red plonk just after breakfast, over lunch, and through long lazy dinners, for days on end, at a time that’s nowhere near Christmas.
It’s behaviour that might get you fired or prompt your family to stage an intervention.
So it’s extremely intoxicating when you’re invited as part of your work to come out and skull as much of the best plonk from Spain’s famous Rioja region as you can manage.
In La Rioja’s capital, Logrono, footprints are stamped into the cobbled
streets, to mark it as a jumping-off spot for the Camino.
But our pilgrimage was a wine one. Rich, full-bodied Rioja wine is made from mainly black grapes grown in La Rioja, Navarre and the Basque province of Alava but we’re doing the 3 Rioja tour exploring the three subzones within La Rioja – Rioja Alta, Rioja Baja and Rioja Alavesa.
Rioja Alavesa and Rioja Alta are closer to the mountains, and slightly higher with cooler, continental climates while Rioja Baja, in the southeast, boasts a drier, warmer Mediterranean climate.
Most of Rioja’s famous vineyards are found along the River Ebro valley between the towns of Haro and Alfaro. Needless to say, the wines’ characters vary greatly across the region, which has around 57,000 hectares of vineyards, producing 250 million litres of wine every year.
We are lucky enough to arrive in Bilbao in early October – slap bang in the middle of the busy harvest – although we miss the crowds for the grape-stomping parties.
SADLY, the Wine Battles where revellers pour wine from buckets over each other in raucous street parties happen during the Haro Wine Festival, in June. But there’s always next year.
Estella’s dad resurrected the grapestamping party here at her family winery ten years ago, and it’s become an annual festival favourite, with locals coming from miles around.
‘The grapes are still fermenting so it doesn’t matter if people don’t wash their feet,’ laughs Estella, reassuringly when the subject of dirty feet comes up.
We’re encouraged to drink the fermenting ‘Joven’ (young) wine straight from the vats though and upstairs in the barn, Estella’s dad and her brother Alberto – busy jumping on and off tractors and machinery – invite us to eat the freshly-snipped mountain of Tempranillo grapes, before they are destemmed, crushed and fermented.
It’s truly magical to visit La Rioja as tractors carrying trailers heavy with juicy grapes trundle past and harvesters snip at bright bunches of black grapes with their pruning shears.
Over at the family-run Dominio de Berzal, we traipse after Richard Gere-lookalike guide Gil, sporting green lips, and spitting pips, after he urges us to eat our way along their experimental rows to taste and compare all the different grape varieties from tempranillo to manzuelo, graciano and merlot. Back at the winery, we’re almost run over by a tractor backing in before releasing a tsunami of grapes out of the trailer. The rich, heady aromas slap us in the face and we sigh, happily.
It’s a good harvest so everyone’s happy – in one vineyard we visit in Rioja Baja, jolly harvesters serenade us Irish girls with a Spanish ditty between the vines.
On crisp mornings – it heats up considerably during the day – the soft mid-Autumn sun casts a warm glow over the soft yellow, green and golden tapestry of vineyards, spreading for miles in every direction, towards the rocky majesty of the Sierra de Cantabria mountains.
These mountains are the gods’ gift to Rioja, protecting the slopes that run down towards the River Ebro from the wind and creating micro-climates adored by the grapes and olive trees that thrive here in the cracked, parched soil.
Here at Estella’s family winery, it’s a real privilege to meet a family safeguarding and resurrecting old traditions, doing all the work themselves, from vine to bottle.
Estella’s dad is a lone ranger in these parts. Wide-eyed, we learn about the invisible underground network – a small city – of 350 sandstone caves beneath the village.
Once upon a time, every family here had their own set of caves and a small winery.
But when the big corporate wineries arrived, the families left the caves, and sold them to the companies – all except Estella’s father.
Now Estella’s family is the only winery in the village working in the caves and making not only Crianza, Reserva and top-end Gran Reserva wine, but the traditional artisan Rioja enjoyed by her grandad and ancestors back through the generations, who all drank the wine daily as a staple food source and carted it about, not in bottles but in goatskins.
It’s made by trampling whole grapes, including the stem, which kickstarts a process called Carbonic Maceration. The family makes just 5000 bottles per year out of a 100,000 bottle yield.
‘It’s wine of every family’s table,’ says Estella.
IT’S NOT typical but for old people it’s their generations’ wine. No machines, traditional. It’s special – totally different. You can find the others everywhere but this is special and you have to come here for it’.
It’s bright, intense and very strong at 15% – but delicious.
And you’ll have to take my word for that – Estella’s family don’t export and only sell at their shop here on the premises and to select restaurants.
As with every winery in the Rioja region, large or small, ‘Joven’ or young wine will be ready to drink by Spring, but the harvest best will rest in French and American Oak barrels for various periods of time, to create Crianza (one year in barrels) Reserva (one year in oak, two in bottle) and Gran Reserva (two years in oak and three in the bottle)
I’ll admit, this categorisation is a revelation to me. I love Rioja wine, but until now I was pretty clueless, picking up whatever looked good or on special at the supermarket. I thought Tempranillo and Crianza were both types of grape.
It’s what makes a visit to Rioja so magical – far from a winetasting tour, it’s an excavation of a rich and living culture.
The vast, corporate wineries are certainly fascinating places to visit.
At the CVne winery, in Haro, in Rioja Alto, we ambled through the eerie ‘wine cemetery’, a prisonlike maze of black-gated vaults filled with thousands of bottles of wine, all covered, thanks to the damp and humid conditions, in blankets of mould.
It’s like a national library and storage archive, with the best examples of their vintage Riojas, going back to when it opened in 1979, catalogued in chronological order.
At the vast CVne complex, we wandered in awe around a cathedral-like room the size of an airport hangar, filled with French and American oak barrels, assembled in lines, Terracotta Army-style. We also marvelled at the head-dizzying array of artefacts at the Museo de la ‘Cultura del Vino Vivanco’, in Rioja Alta, where everything from ancient farming tools are exhibited alongside hundreds of novelty corkscrews.
Nestled among the vineyards in Rioja Alavesa is the Frank Gehrydesigned Marques de Riscal winery, including a shimmering, wavelike structure fashioned into an exclusive hotel, frequented by Hollywood A-listers such as Brad and Angelina – as impressive as you’d expect from the man behind the Guggenheim in Bilbao.
The story goes that his arm was twisted to design the building when owners cracked open bottles made in the year Gehry was born. Yes, Rioja has that effect.
One evening we joined the pinxtos crawl dipping in and out of the 50 or so tiny shed-style bars crammed with tourists and locals on a tiny street called Calle del Laurel.
Being pescatarian, I gorged on stacks of garlicky oily mushrooms, fried up and skewered with a shrimp on top, and anchovies and pimento peppers on baguettes, while the carnivores lapped up goodies like the pork and Iberico skewers and pork and chorizo sandwiches.Washed down with a glass of Rioja, it was an elbow battle onto the next joint for more of the same.
An unmissable stop-off is La Guardia, all ancient cobbled streets – cars are banned – perched on a hill with 180 degree views looking out across miles of vineyards with sweeping views up towards the Cantabrians – we were lucky enough to catch the awesome sunset.
We marvelled at the magnificent portico of the Church of Santa María de los Reyes before visiting another family cave ‘calada’; here too there is an underground network of hundreds of caves. We ambled the medieval cobbled streets before stopping for dinner at the quirkily fabulous hotel.
But by far, the best of Rioja’s bunch, has to be Estella’s family winery, where nothing is for show and the passion is palpable.
They’re a real family, inviting you into their home, showering you with wine and stories.
Afterwards, at the bar, we buy their bottles of magic at knockdown prices unheard of at home.
As Estella says, you can’t buy the stuff like her grandad used to make, anywhere else.
To Estella, her dad and to Grandad Rolfino, we say Salut.